


Loud, Like Thunder

by annhellsing



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Antagonistic Romance, Blood, F/M, Healing, Injury, Love's There If You Squint, Pre-Series, death mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21741481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annhellsing/pseuds/annhellsing
Summary: He hates, it's in his nature. But every so often, once in a rare while, he can feel something else.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Reader
Comments: 3
Kudos: 60





	Loud, Like Thunder

Name day tourneys soak the air in the smell of coppery blood and pungent sweat. It still hangs over you, like the sun as you scrape the red off the cobblestones. Your fingers are beginning to hurt, the water is cold and the stones are sharp.

The day is fading, and you realize you’ve been scrubbing away the hours with a whole list of chores still ahead. It will bleed into tomorrow, it always does, and you will be chastised for having idle hands.

But they are not idle, you are bent over double with a coarse brush and brown-red, congealing blood caked under your fingernails. So engrossed are you in menial labour that you barely notice the single, long shadow moving across the stones until you turn to wet your brush in the bucket of water.

“The mockery begins,” you say, sitting back on your heels and craning your head up, up, up. He’s like a hill, has to be or his brother wouldn’t be the mountain. It hurts to stare at Sandor, he eclipses the sun like a bad omen and scowls at you deeply. It’s impossible to tell if he means the face he makes, or if it’s just been burned into that shape.

It grows, the scowl and then he grunts, “Mockery’s for men who don’t know how to get their strikes in any other way.”

You dunk the brush into the bucket and care very little if the sloshing, bloody water is splashed on his boots. But Sandor doesn’t move, perhaps he half-expects you to rise from your knees, try to reclaim a little dignity lost. But you care little for that and you have work to do.

Still, you can’t help a smile.

“You’ve never run out of those, as long as I’ve known you,” you say, a fondness of tone slipping in around the edges. How embarrassing. Above you, Sandor’s audibly clears his throat.

“Run out of what?” he asks with a hiss so cruel you’re sure he’s been practicing. For the barest moment, you look up. That affectionate tone’s taken hold of your face.

“Clegane words of wisdom. Are they passed from father to son?” but you’re sure to make the question sound blithely teasing. It sits with him, though you’re unsure of how well.

“No,” Sandor sounds brusque, on the verge of clearing his throat again as the menacing growl has been stunned away. He doesn’t look at you when he adds, “Whatever wisdom I’ve got’s been hard-earned.”

“Then it’s worth twice as much. Would do me good to remember it,” you smirk at him and turn your interest back to the task at hand.

“And now you’re mocking me,” Sandor grumbles. You shake your head.

“Just teasing, and only a little,” you say, “all that armour and you can’t stand a jest.”

“You missed a spot,” he kicks the ground with the toe of his boot, dried blood flakes off and onto the stone you’ve just cleaned.

“So I did,” you reply with calculated nonchalance. You swab over the new blood. Without looking up again, you ask, “And you did win, hm? The tourney?”

“One fight,” he replies, he sounds vindicated.

“I could hear the cheering,” you say. Even to his hears that doesn’t sound like a vicious mockery. More like joy. Real joy.

Sandor doesn’t respond. Above you, he shifts with barely-hidden discomfort. You look small on your knees, hobbled over like a crone and clearly exhausted. It isn’t easy, bullying something a quarter of his size.

You make it easier by muttering, “Really, though, killing a man half your size. For shame.”

“He didn’t die easily,” Sandor rumbles, “if that lifts your spirits any.”

“Shockingly it doesn’t,” you reply, rolling your eyes. But they fall on something worrying at his feet. “Oi, would you mind not bloodying the place up all the more?”

“The fuck are you talking about?” he takes a step back when you reach forward, like he worries your hand will catch the lace of his boot or the hem of his trousers.

Instead, your finger prods at a small, red dot of fresh blood standing against the sandy stone. Your brow furrows and you touch it, smearing it over the pad of your thumb. You look up at him again, all facetiousness having gone in the space it took for you to realize.

“You’re bleeding,” it’s not a question, it’s what makes you stand up.

“Said he didn’t die easy,” Sandor huffs. You throw the brush down into the bucket and pinkish water droplets scatter on stone. Your hand is ungentle, it comes down on his elbow and with all the force you can muster, you pull him away from the courtyard.

You mutter under your breath, none of it flattering. He catches idiot and fool, standing there like a child when he’s hurt. Sandor jerks his elbow away from you, embarrassed more than he’ll admit that he let you drag him the three feet you did.

“Get off me,” he’s back to growling, you round on him. But it’s the hopelessness in your eyes that shakes him up inside.

“What did that man have that pierced your armour, my goodness?” you sound exasperated, but conscious of any eyes that may be looking. There is no privacy to be found in King’s Landing, even the servants don’t know peace.

“Dagger,” Sandor says, he lifts a big hand and places it on the opposite shoulder, “turns out, there’s a weak spot.”

“I won’t drag you,” you sigh, looking at his hurt shoulder even after his other arm’s fallen away.

“I’ve seen the maester,” he snaps, like you’re the fool-child for assuming he hadn’t.

“But your still bleeding,” you say. He hates the softness in your voice, the way you reach for him a third time. Sandor doesn’t know if he lets you take hold of his uninjured forearm or if your stubbornness simply allows you to live through the hate in his eyes.

Men have fallen over dead from it, you’re sure. You lead him out of the sun.

“You’re in luck,” you tell him as you walk. At least you’re ahead of him, he doesn’t have to look at your stupid expression. “I have a an old shirt I made into bandages just last night.”

Sandor says nothing, he only grunts. He’s covered from gullet to toes, but you can still feel the heat of him through smallclothes and leather and metal. You keep your pace quick enough for a man with an impressive stride.

You push open a small, wooden door at the end of a long hallway in the bowels of the keep. From a distance, Sandor can hear other servants puttering about in the kitchens. None of them seem to hear the sound of your door creaking open. You shut it as quietly as you can.

Sandor doesn’t need you to say it, he knows it’s rare there aren’t three other girls in here. But you stay silent this time, failing to comment on how alone the two of you are.

He’s been hurt before, suffered a thorough tongue-lashing from you for being reckless while doing his duty. You’ve whispered in the hollow of his ear that no prince is worth bleeding for. Sandor has chosen not to wonder why you get cross with him when he’s injured. He’s disgusted by the thought of you caring.

“Off with your clothes,” you tell him as you busy about the room. You weren’t lying, you come to him armed with bandages. And Sandor hasn’t moved an inch.

He stands by your bed, stock-still with a sneer curling up on the unmarred side of his face. And he keeps still as you start prying armour off of him, and all the while still muttering to yourself.

“Bleeding on my courtyard, really,” he catches. And he can’t help it, his laugh is cold and cruel as steel. You look up at him with a poison glare.

“It isn’t yours,” he says, looking down at you with an expectant expression. You lift an eyebrow.

“Isn’t the prince’s, or the queen’s or the king’s,” you say with a shrug, “wasn’t even the Mad King’s, he didn’t build the place. Or did he?”

“How should I know?” Sandor asks, you give a small shrug like an admission of some truth.

The iron and leather covering him are heavy, must be putting pressure on his shoulder. You resist the urge to wince as the smell of blood gets all the worse.

“If I care for it, it should be mine,” you say, as if all would be right with the world if that were so,” you pause your hands and glance at him, “like you.”

Sandor doesn’t say a word, he only scoffs like what you’ve said wasn’t funny enough to earn a laugh. He doesn’t consider, cannot consider you might be serious.

“Look at this,” you tut when you’ve undressed him to his shift. He scowls and keeps his eyes anywhere but where you’d like them to be.

One arm’s been ripped off to accommodate a hard slash to the ball of his shoulder, deep enough to be sewn up with needle and thread.

“You’ve bled right through the bandage, you know you have to change these,” you huff. Sandor’s eyes snap to yours, then.

“Of course I have to fucking change them,” he growls, “fucking maester said once every few hours, it’s only been one.”

“That isn’t good,” you say, “you might have to pay a bit more attention to it than that, but you’re all sewn up at least. No ripped stitches.”

He goes quiet again while you inspect him, he hates being looked at almost as much as he does the worry in your eyes.

“Not gonna cry?” he asks, looking satisfied with the jab. It doesn’t land, you’re focused enough that you barely hear it.

“Sit down, please,” you tell him. But at the very same time, your hand moves to hover over his shoulder. Slowly, you ease him to sit at the centre of the bed.

Your hand darts from arm to neck to chin too fast for him to register. And it says there long enough that the contact might feel nice. He shoves your hand away like it stings and you divine the proper meaning from that.

The bandage is slippery with blood, you cut it with the little knife you keep sheathed in your pocket. Arguably for cutting seams and ripping fabric, Sandor knows its found its way into guts and between ribs.

“Does it hurt very much?” you ask and the blandness to your tone is hard on his ears. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t turn his bark on you again.

“Only when I move it,” he replies, “you get used to the pressure from the shoulder plates.”

“When you’re strong, you do,” you tell him. That bare hint of a fond look returns to turn his stomach.

You decide halfway through winding a bandage around the wound that it should be cleaned again before you proceed any further. The blood is drying and caking around the stitching at least when you return from the water basin with a small bowl and a clean cloth.

“This might sting,” you say, “just hold still.”

“M’not gonna bite you,” he says, “pain’s nothing.”

“See?” you ask, “like I said, strong.”

“Just be done with it,” Sandor’s voice is a rumble, like thunder turning distant.

You touch the cloth to his shoulder and he doesn’t so much as wince. You watch his face, but it does not change. Cleaning the blood from him is different than stone, no matter how much he’d like to confuse the two. He’s warm.

Sandor would likely tell you that stone is warm, too, under the sun. And you’d tell him to try scrubbing it, it grows cold fast.

But he doesn’t, even as you wind the bandage around his arm with an air of finality. You sit before him on the bed, looking at him in the way that he loathes. When the work is done, your hand moves slower, this time.

He could stop its arc over his shoulder, to collarbone and briefly the side of his neck. To jaw and cheek as it did before, coming to rest on the side of his face that can still feel.

“I want to kiss you,” you say instead of reminding him that he’ll need to coddle his injury a while. Sandor doesn’t know if he prefers this admission. He gives a tired sigh and glances away, but he is still facing you. “Might I?”

Sandor doesn’t answer, but he does give a grunt that tells you yes. Permission with him is more than important, it’s life-saving. To kiss, touch, feel him without expressly asking so is inviting pain in through the front door. It’s best not to startle him.

And it isn’t like you don’t know where to do it. On the right side of his mouth, you touch your lips to his. And Sandor stiffens like you’re cold, like you’re freezing and threatening for a few, tense moments. But you kiss him, as you want to, with a hand at his cheek.

Your other arm moves around his shoulder, framing the back of his neck with a loose grip. You know not to hold him too tight, kiss him too hard, love him in any way other than gently.

He wouldn’t trust it either way. So you go slowly.


End file.
